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Cosensitizers were designed for simultaneous filling up of both absorption valleys of porphyrins, achieving a high cosensitized DSSC efficiency of 10.75%.

Abstract Novel interfacial microwave heating of a layered structure has been applied to the process of low-temperature annealing of titania mesoporous films for dye-sensitized solar cells. Interfacial microwave annealing dramatically enhances the cell performances as compared with conventional heating in an electric oven. The improvement of cell performance is attributed to the electron transport properties in the titania films annealed by MW resulting in longer diffusion length as compared with conventional heating.

A simple strategy to synthesize ultrathin, amorphous and alloyed structural cobalt–vanadium hydr(oxy)oxide catalysts with enhanced water oxidation catalytic activity.

The current thin-film photovoltaic (PV) technologies are dominated by CdTe and Cu(In,Ga)Se2 compounds. However, due to the limited availably and toxicity of the elements in these technologies, the current research efforts are directed to search alternative earth abundant materials. Therefore, in this work, we analyze the CuSbS2 and CuBiS2 compounds as alternative absorber materials for future thin-film solar cells. Employing a first-principles approach within the density functional theory, we calculate the structural, electronic, and optical properties of CuSbS2 and CuBiS2 compounds. We show that these compounds have indirect fundamental band gap Eg ≈ 1.5–1.7 eV. The indirect gap nature is different from the previous experimental measurements. However, due to the flat bands, the direct gap Egd ≈ 1.6–1.8 eV is suitable for solar energy technologies. Furthermore, calculations reveal that these compounds have strong absorption coefficients, which are about twice as large as in other Cu-S based PV materials like CuInS2 and Cu2ZnSnS4. Therefore, CuSbS2 and CuBiS2 have the potential to be used as absorber materials in thin-film PV technologies.

Transitions of the future energy systems Editorial of year 2013 for the 101th volume of Applied Energy

Accurately evaluating the health status of lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) is significant to enhance the safety, efficiency, and economy of LIBs deployment. However, the complex degradation processes inside the battery make it a thorny challenge. Data-driven methods are widely used to resolve the problem without exploring the complex aging mechanisms; however, random and incomplete charging-discharging processes in actual applications make the existing methods fail to work. Here, we develop three data-driven methods to estimate battery state of health (SOH) using a short random charging segment (RCS). Four types of commercial LIBs (75 cells), cycled under different temperatures and discharging rates, are employed to validate the methods. Trained on a nominal cycling condition, our models can achieve high-precision SOH estimation under other different conditions. We prove that an RCS with a 10mV voltage window can obtain an average error of less than 5%, and the error plunges as the voltage window increases.

The cobalt site-modified polymer could significantly promote charge transfer and reduce charge recombination of hematite for light-driven water oxidation.

A water-soluble organic redox couple (TT−/DTT) and new organic dyes (D45 and D51) have been developed for aqueous dye-sensitized solar cells (DSCs). An optimal efficiency of 3.5% was obtained using the D51 dye and an optimized electrolyte composition. The highest IPCE value obtained was 68% at 460 nm.